Liberalism
Liberalism
Liberalism
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History of Liberalism
We find the beginning of liberal tradition in Christian roots. Christianity gave birth to completely different ideals and morals.
It brought moral doctrine, peace and humanity as fundamental value. It assumed the existence of ideal state of human soul
and therefore human society. Thus international relations can be improved. And it was also the first alternative to classical
tradition. The approach of early liberals was making Kingdom of God on earth.
After renaissance, individual became center in liberalism. Liberals believe that more the freedom individual are given by
state, more the states can cooperate peacefully. Thus faith in rationality of individual was more important than hierarchical
concentration of religious power in Roman Catholic Church. Eventually, rationality moved from individual to state and liberals
started believing that states can behave rationally.
Kant has suggested that the perpetual peace among nations can be achieved. He suggests to establish Peace Federation
between states based on rational individual and Republican political order. Kant was believer in good nature of human. He
argued that if liberation of man will advance peaceful society. Because humans are rational, they will understand it is much
more profitable to cooperate than to go for conflict. Personal safety and property are more valuable assets than lives of
human beings. They will also understand cost of war. Thus, in a republican state, people will vote against war.
Rosseau
Individuals are inherently good, but corrupted by civilization and society. International politics will be improved by spreading
of freedom to all states.
Thus In beginning of liberalism, the main discussion was about nature of humans, place of morality and individual freedom.
Just War
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The concept of ‘Just War’ as discussed by Hugo Grotius suggest three preconditions for any war to be ‘just’. 1) Self
Defense 2) Protection of property 3) Revenge or compensation. He argues that beyond this, humans have no reason to go
for war.
1] Liberal Institutionalism.
It was one of the suggestions by Woodrow Wilson in his famous 14 points speech. He took the idea from domestic politics.
In domestic politics, anarchy is contained because of presence of state. Hence, he suggested that if we build institutions, we
can create rule based order, in the words of Woodrow Wilson, ‘the institutions can convert the jungle of international politics
into zoo.’
The institutions can convert the jungle of international politics into zoo.
Woodrow Wilson
Initially there was not much enthusiasm for building institutions, the process has been extremely slow. However since the
end of cold war there is a phenomenal rise in number of institutions, global regimes and international law. But As far as
effectiveness of the experiment is concerned there is a difference of opinion.
Still, liberals have huge faith in the process of institution building. Realist do share such faith. They think that institutions are
the extension of states and states are guided by national interest. According to them, it does not make any qualitative
difference. Game theorist Joseph Nogee has given the concept of quasi-negotiations. Nations only prefer to participate in
these negotiations because they don’t want to be seen as ‘spoilers’ but have no faith in the institutions.
One of the major weakness of the experiment is lack of representativeness, transparency and accountability. Hence these
institutions themselves suffer from the crisis of credibility. It is to be noted that despite existence of many institutions arms
race among major powers is continuing.
Hedley Bull in his book ANARCHICAL SOCIETY has acknowledged the transformation that has happened in international
politics over a period of time because of the growth of institutions, international law and regimes. According to him, these
developments have converted anarchy into ‘anarchical society’. Thus international politics is not a complete society, nor a
complete anarchy but it is a sort of anarchical society.
2] Sociological Liberalism.
They focus on society to society interaction i.e. Tract 2 diplomacy unlike the realists as well as liberal institutionalist who
focus on track 1.
They suggest that political class may have its own limitations and vested interest, hence it is better if there is an interaction
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between people. It is a good approach to address ‘trust deficit’. Thus sociological liberalism will support policies like open
borders, visa liberalization etc.
In present times, the relevance of society centric approach has increased, because of globalization the nature of world order
has changed. According to James Rosenau, we are living in a society centric world, there is a considerable decline in the
capacities of the states to keep surveillance on the borders.
John Burton through his cob-web model also suggests that the world has become society centric, there is a growth of global
civil society.
He has given Communication theory. Karl Deutsch has measured the amount of interaction between states. The amount
of interaction can be measured through 1) Measuring the amount of international travels, visas issued, letters exchanged,
phone calls made. He observed that more peaceful and beneficial relations where the amount of interaction is high. e.g.
Among the countries of Western Europe, between Western Europe and North America. Interactions results into the
formation of ‘security community’. Hence Karl Deutsch proposed that the neighbouring countries should try to achieve the
ideal of security community.
Security community
1) It is an alternative to security dilemma. 2) Security community denotes set of persons who do not consider each other as
a threat. In case the threat exists, it exists from outside the periphery of the security community. Thus they believe that
there is a common threat to them. The idea of security community comes from domestic politics. Nation states can be called
as security communities. The idea can be replicated at a regional level and further at broader levels.
What is way to build security community?
By increasing the interaction or communications. Therefore this approach is called as communications approach. e.g. EU
is a security community. ASEAN is also in the process of emerging as security community. Western Europe and North
America is an example of trans-Atlantic security community.
Unfortunately many states in the third world countries could not transform themselves into a security community even at
domestic level.
3] Functionalism.
This experiment has been done successfully in European Union. There has been an unsuccessful attempt with the
experiment in South Asia in the form of ‘composite dialogue’ process, started under ‘two plus six framework’ with Pakistan.
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Challenges to functionalism.
One of the challenge in functionalism is that it is a long term process. It requires huge patience and the political will.
It may happen that the process of integration gets stagnated. In this situation, neo functionalist Ernst Haas suggest that we
cannot keep the political class completely away. Integration process cannot proceed without political class, acting with
strong will and determination.
4] Interdependence School
It is economic interdependence based on integration of market. Thus a neo-liberal idea. e.g. India’s action to grant MFN
status to Pakistan can be seen as an effort to implement the approach of interdependence.
Exponents of interdependence.
Based on the ideas of Immanuel Kant, who suggested republicanism, the scholars of democratic peace theory suggest
1] Democracies form ‘zone of peace’. Zone of peace is not a formal arrangement, it is just a informal region. Democracies
promote pacifist culture, the culture of toleration.
2] In democracies, people develop the habit to resolve the disputes through dialogue rather than force.
3] There is a pressure of public opinion and it is not easy for states to overlook public opinion.
4] In democracies, there is a freedom of speech and expression and hence it is possible to have the critical examination of
the foreign policy decisions and a chance to correct.
Democratic peace theory is also one of the most controversial theories because
1] If there is no war between any two major democracies, it can be just a coincidence.
2] If there has been no major war, it is not necessary that democracy alone has been the factor.
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3] The biggest criticism comes as it provides basis to legitimize the actions of USA to introduce democracy at gunpoint.
(Bush doctrine).
4] In the eyes of countries like Russia and China, democracy promotion is an attempt of regime change and to install puppet
governments.
Unlike other liberal theories, which are prescriptive, complex interdependence is descriptive. It describes the state of
relations among nations in post cold war world order.
Post cold war relations are different from Westphalian world order. Instead of anarchical world order, we see the emergence
of complex interdependence among the nations. Complex interdependence is different from simple interdependence. At
present, nations have become interdependent in a complex manner. It means that they have become interdependent but it
does not mean that their conflicts have been resolved. They have become more interdependent due to forces of
globalization i.e. Integration of markets, the rise of global threats (terrorism, climate change, ozone depletion etc.). And it is
beyond the capacity of single state to counter the threats on their own. Hence the conditions force the countries to
cooperate. Complex interdependence can be explained as a situation where ‘one is forced to love, whom, one would
otherwise prefer love to hate’. The relations among all countries US and Russia, Russia and China, India and USA can be
termed as complex interdependence.
The complex interdependence puts a question mark on the way structural realists explain the state of international politics.
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